Hey Vic, This is Brad from Tumble-weed - you used to train with Troy Fitzhugh and the boys at the adobe mud hut gym out back of Colonel Jackson’s house back in the early nineties. I don’t know if you remem-ber me. Anyway my question was about the press-behind-the neck: they kill my shoulders. I hear about all the greats of years gone by who loved the behind the neck press and all the poundage they could handle.

Behind the Neck Press

Lowering 135-pounds down past the back of my head makes it feel like my shoulders sockets are going to dislocate. I can perform seated front presses with a bar using 225 for 5-reps and handle a pair of 100-pound dumbbells for eight reps in the over-head press on a good day. But 135-pounds in the behind the neck press tears me up. I feel like I’m missing out on something. I’m not stiff and inflexible, I religiously do Parrillo stretches. I’ve done them for years and even these don’t seem to help. Do you have any tips?

Brad, the Great State of Texas

Hey Brad I remember you; give my regards to Big Bubba, Little Bubba, Slim, Two Toes, Troy, the Colonel and all the other hardcore iron-slingers at “The Mud Hut.” I’ve trained in a lot of strange places but one of the strangest was the adobe mud hut gym out back of Colonel Armstrong Jackson’s pala-tial estate on his ranch in Southwest Texas. The Colonel made a lot of mon-ey in cattle futures and was a profes-sional poker player who used to hang in the same big money Texas “Hold ‘Em” poker circles as Amarillo Slim and Doyle Brunson. He was a savage weight trainer and could bench press 400 at age 70. His two twin boys, Big Bubba and Little Bubba, each won national weightlifting titles in the Special Olympics. The boys were re-tarded (sorry! that’s politically incor-rect, mentally challenged) and strong as hell.

This led to some hair raising training sessions as the Colonel would indulge the twins no end and found all their antics funny and endearing. I once had Big Bubba, weighing 270 pounds with a 500 bench press, jump on my stomach while I was benching 405 for reps and only an alert spot by Troy and Brad kept the barbell from decapitating me. Big Bubba used to like to load a barbell to 315 pounds and walk around the circumference of the 1500-acre ranch “jus’ fer fun” if no one was around to stop him. He once stepped in a gopher hole walk-ing with poundage and jammed his right leg so deep and tight he ended up stuck there overnight.

A search party eventually found the muscle-bound boy, one leg stuck in the gopher hole up to his crotch, crying like a little girl. Little Bubba was a pyromaniac who always found matches somewhere and thought it hilarious to set our gym bags on fire while we were distract-ed with our training. He set my bag on fire once when I had a just gotten $1,000 from the ATM. The Colonel, who looked exactly like chicken King Colonel Harlan Sanders, laughed hys-terically and paid me back from the 3 to 4 grand of “pocket change” he rou-tinely carried in his wallet. Things took a deadly turn when “Little B,” as the Colonel called him, set Ron Jensen’s gym bag on fire when it contained a Glock pistol and spare clip of ammo. At about the same time we smelled the smoke, 9-milimeter rounds started go-ing off and we ran out of the gym in a crazed panic. Little B was yelling, “Uh Oh! Little B didn’t do it! Uh Oh! Little B no set fire!” Thank god we trained in an old Navaho adobe mud hut the Colonel had converted into a power gym or Little B would have burned the building down a dozen times. Anyway - to answer your question - I had a shoulder surgeon friend explain to me that some people can do the PBN quite easily and others cannot; it all depends on shoulder structural genetics - how your shoulder is con-structed.

I would forget about them as everything you say indicates that you are structurally unsuited for the exer-cise. I would concentrate on the seated dumbbell press and the overhead bar-bell press. If other readers out there in Parrillo-land are able to do this mag-nificent exercise without pain, then place the PBN in heavy rotation as all-time great bodybuilders have built incredible deltoids using this exercise. Remember to lower the bar only down to the bottom of the earlobes before pressing the next rep upward. Do not allow the bar to settle on the shoulders between repetitions as pushing upward from a relaxed posture in an extreme position not only reduces the training poundage dramatically but reeks havoc on the rotator cuffs. Sorry about that. Write back and send me the Colonel’s phone number as I’ve lost it and would love to talk with the old man. Some-one told me a few years back that he actually taught Little Bubba how to fly his Beechcraft V-tail “doctor killer” airplane?

Mr. Steele, I am confused on the subject of carbohydrates. I have used the pop-ular “zero carb” dietary approach and found that while I lost pounds my energy level dropped faster than my General Motors stock. I couldn’t wait to get off the no-carb diet and get back to “regular” bad eating. Then I noticed that John Parrillo sells Pro-Carb powder as a supplement and further research revealed that half of his 50-50 Plus^TM is malt dextrin carbohydrate powder - obviously Mr. Parrillo is not afraid of carbs - I’m new to the Parrillo nutritional ap-proach and I’m fascinated that he doesn’t discourage carb consumption but encourages it! Perhaps you could bring me up to speed on the issue of carbohydrates and fat loss. Appar-ently the idea that you can eat carbs and lose fat is not a contradiction in terms. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Sara, New Haven

You’re confusion is common in this day and age when fitness marketers have convinced the populace that all carbs are bad and need to be elimi-nated if one is to successfully shed body fat. Some carbohydrates are in-deed bad, very bad, and need to be eliminated altogether. Other carbohy-drates are fine if they are consumed in combination with certain other foods. Some carbohydrate sources are high-ly recommended and can be eaten in unlimited quantities anytime day or night. Used correctly, carbohydrates will accelerate the acquisition of lean muscle without adding body fat.

Refined carbohydrates are carbohy-drates such as pastries, bread, cookies, junk foods, chips, snacks, pasta, white our products, sugar-laden foods, des-erts…any highly processed, refined carbohydrate should be avoided as these “foods” cause insulin to spike. These carb food sources need be elim-inated altogether. Starchy carbohydrates are accept-able and desirable but need be eaten in combination with other foods in order to dampen the insulin secretion that occurs if starch is eaten alone. Potatoes and rice and the main starch source; corn and beans are also starch carbs. Fibrous carbohydrates are vegetable carbs such as broccoli, bell pepper, spinach, green beans, salad greens, mushrooms, cabbage and onions. Fi-brous carbohydrate consumption actu-ally retards insulin spikes and when eaten with starch will dampen starch-insulin spikes.

On a related but relevant note: the Gly-cemic Index, which is treated as some sort of Holy Grail in most fitness cir-cles, is, in this man’s opinion, worth-less. The G-Index proponents, most of whom design diets based on how foods ‘rate’ on the index, fail to recog-nize or intelligently explain that unless the foods are eaten and digested one at a time the index is worthless! Sure if you eat a baked potato all by itself it causes insulin to react in a certain way but who eats one food at a time? That same potato that causes insulin to go crazy eaten alone can be eaten with fi-brous carbs and lean protein and have a subdued insulin response! Parrillo Pro Carb ^TM is an incredible product and when taken in conjunc-tion with balanced “Parrillo Meals” (a portion of lean protein, a portion of fibrous carbohydrate, a portion of starchy carbohydrate) provides the body with glycogen-restoring energy-supplying carbohydrate.

The Parrillo Nutritional System recognizes the ef-fect of combining food and turns this fact-of-life into an advantage! 50 50 Plus^TM is a proprietary blend of whey protein and maltodextrin and is the ab-solute finest post-workout supplement available on the market. The smartest thing you can do for the body after a savage workout is supply battered muscle tissue with nutrients needed to heal and grow. Amino acids and glycogen-restoring carbohydrate are the raw materials needed to construct new muscle tissue. My advice to you is jettison the unhealthy and energy-sapping no-carb diet approach and use carbohydrates to your advantage: recognize that all carbs are not cre-ated equal…eliminate refined carbs, eat massive amounts of fibrous carbs, consume starchy carbs in conjunction with lean protein and fiber. Add Pro-Carb^TM and 50 50 Plus^TM to your sup-plemental arsenal to maximize muscle growth without increasing body fat!

Man of Steele, I’m bored out of my freaking mind riding my stupid stationary bike - I want to throw it through my living room plate glass window - minutes pass like hours. Can you recommend some cardio alternatives that work?

Stupefied in San Diego

Get outside! What the hell is wrong with you! You live in San Diego and haven’t figured out that you can jog, sprint, do intense roadwork, take a jump rope out to the patio, play rac-quetball, and get involved in a high-in-tensity pickup basketball game down at the park or swim until your arms and legs feel like lead? C’mon! Living in San Diego and being bored with in-door cardio is like going to Hawaii on vacation and never leaving your hotel room. Besides, as John (Parrillo) points out in all his seminars, intense cardio, lung-searing, heart-pounding, fatigue-inducing style aerobics, are the most effective form of cardio. Mild aerobics are okay but intense cardio actually reconfigures muscle tissue…a muscle that is worked intensely using aero-bic activity will increase mitochon-dria density and that is a great thing: the more mitochondria (cellular blast furnaces) a muscle contains the more efficient that muscle becomes at intak-ing nutrients and disposing of toxins and waste products.

A muscle loaded with mitochondria is a muscle that can grow larger faster and absorb tons of nutrients without adding fat. The only way to increase Mito density is by working at a pace that forces the heart and lungs to operate at capacity. This causes torrents of blood to be forced through the arterial highways and the nutrient/waste product exchange rate increases dramatically. Muscle waste products and toxins are carried away at an accelerated rate. Get off the sta-tionary bike, get into some decent run-ning shoes and lets hit the beach for a 5-mile run…the sun, the waves, the exhilaration of being outdoors…suck in the clean oxygen and watch the ever changing scenery. Outdoor car-dio, routinely rotated and varied, will cause you to look forward to cardio in-stead of dreading it. Instead of check-ing your watch every two minutes to see if you can quit, you’ll be looking to go longer, harder, faster and more intensely because you’re having such a damned good time! Plus you’ll be building more mitochondria density and increasing your ability to eat more without getting fat. Perhaps you should throw that mechanical bike through the plate glass window!

Parrillo Performance
(800) 344-3404 

Recent Entries

• Good Fats for Good Health
• The Glycemic Index and Bodybuilding
• Oblique Training-The Full-Contact Twist
• Bodybuilding after Y2K
• Vitamins and Minerals Part II
• Shape Up in Eight Weeks The Easy Way
• Kelly Greene
• Parrillo Bars for Every Fitness Need
• Regaining Your Weight Loss “Oomph”
• Jennifer Hendershott > USA Fitness Champion

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 3:13 pm and is filed under General Training and Workout. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.